How I learnt React JS
About me
I have more than 14 years of experience working mostly as a full stack engineer. Have build web based solutions using jQuery, HTML, Angular, React, ASP.net Web Forms, ASP.net Web APIs, SQL Server, Cosmos DB, Azure Services and many more things involved.
Why I wanted to learnt React JS
There was a need in the team to ramp up on React JS with TypeScript for a new project. Out of Angular and React, which were the contenders, React JS was selected mostly because of it's performance, easy to understand and a large set of open source libraries.
How I approached learning React JS
GitHub and Youtube videos were very helpful. There are many content creators who explains the nitty-gritty of technology in very simple words. And GitHub especially gives live examples of the code that you can just clone and play with it on your local.
Challenges I faced
The main challenges was being new to TypeScript, especially when you're used to loosely typed Javascript. Correctly structuring the project might become a challenge. Also, as React JS is not an opinionated technology, there are many ways of doing the same thing. So, chosing one way of doing things versus the other becomes a challenge and one need to take care of the Pros and Cons very closely. But, resources like Stack Overflow Q&As, GitHub issues contains lot of discussions, and those helped a lot.
Key takeaways
React JS was indeed a good decision the team made. We were able to develop the app in quick time because of readily available libraries with good documentation. When we measured the performance against a similar web app built using Angular, we found the app built using React to be a bit faster. One of the reason for this is that React emits a little lesser unnecessary HTML tags compared to Angular.
Tips and advice
I learnt React JS after being 12 years in the industry. So, there is no age limit to learn a technology that you want to learn.
If there are ambiguity in choosing solutions, one need to weigh in the Pros and Cons in terms of faster delivery, cost, ease of learning, ease of maintainence.
Final thoughts and next steps
I love working on Angular as much as React and if there is a need or a project that requires me to work on Angular I will definitely do it. This post is a reflection on how easily I was able to ramp up on it and deliver and not really comparing the two.
